Methanediol from cloud-processed formaldehyde is only a minor source of atmospheric formic acid.

Atmospheric formic acid is severely underpredicted by models. A recent study proposed that this discrepancy can be resolved by abundant formic acid production from the reaction (1) between hydroxyl radical and methanediol derived from in-cloud formaldehyde processing and provided a chamber-experiment-derived rate constant, k1 = 7.5 × 10-12 cm3 s-1. High-level accuracy coupled cluster calculations in combination with E,J-resolved two-dimensional master equation analyses yield k1 = (2.4 ± 0.5) × 10-12 cm3 s-1 for relevant atmospheric conditions (T = 260-310 K and P = 0-1 atm). We attribute this significant discrepancy to HCOOH formation from other molecules in the chamber experiments. More importantly, we show that reversible aqueous processes result indirectly in the equilibration on a 10 min. time scale of the gas-phase reaction [Formula: see text] (2) with a HOCH2OH to HCHO ratio of only ca. 2%. Although HOCH2OH outgassing upon cloud evaporation typically increases this ratio by a factor of 1.5-5, as determined by numerical simulations, its in-cloud reprocessing is shown using a global model to strongly limit the gas-phase sink and the resulting production of formic acid. Based on the combined findings in this work, we derive a range of 1.2-8.5 Tg/y for the global HCOOH production from cloud-derived HOCH2OH reacting with OH. The best estimate, 3.3 Tg/y, is about 30 times less than recently reported. The theoretical equilibrium constant Keq (2) determined in this work also allows us to estimate the Henry's law constant of methanediol (8.1 × 105 M atm-1 at 280 K).

A comparison of QTP functionals against coupled-cluster methods for EAs of small organic molecules.

EA-EOM-CCSD electron affinities and LUMO energies of various Kohn-Sham density functional theory (DFT) methods are calculated for an a priori IP benchmark set of 64 small, closed-shell molecules. The purpose of these calculations was to investigate whether the QTP KS-DFT functionals can emulate EA-EOM-CC with only a mean-field approximation. We show that the accuracy of DFT-relative to CCSD-improves significantly when elements of correlated orbital theory are introduced into the parameterization to define the QTP family of functionals. In particular, QTP(02), which has only a single range separation parameter, provides results accurate to a MAD of <0.15 eV for the whole set of 64 molecules compared to EA-EOM-CCSD, far exceeding the results from the non-QTP family of density functionals.

Dark Doubly Excited States with Modified Coupled Cluster Models: A Reliable Compromise between Cost and Accuracy?

To treat doubly excited states, the treatment of triple excitations is considered necessary in the framework of equation-of-motion coupled cluster (EOM-CC) methods. We investigate models without explicit triples and seek quantitative measure for the performance of EOM based on CC with singles and doubles (CCSD) or modified CCSD (Distinguishable Cluster Approximation) approaches for states with predominant double excitation character. We also test the efficacy of including triples in perturbative manner through EOM-CCSD(T) and in an iterative way through EOM-CCSDT-3 method. Extended similarity transformed EOM-CCSD(EXT-STEOM-CCSD) method is also tested and provides superior quality results at comparatively low cost. We use the QUEST2 benchmark set of double excitations proposed by Loos et al. [ J. Chem. Theory Comput.2019, 15, 1939] to investigate the performance of methods such as EOM-CCSD, EOM-DCSD, EXT-STEOM-CCSD, ΔCCSD, and ΔDCSD. We also test a tailored CC approach, ΔpairCCD-TCCSD.

Excited states with pair coupled cluster doubles tailored coupled cluster theory.

It is known that some non-dynamic effects of electron correlation can be included in coupled cluster theory using a tailoring technique that separates the effects of non-dynamic and dynamic correlations. Recently, the simple pCCD (pair coupled cluster doubles) wavefunction was shown to provide good results for some non-dynamic correlation problems, such as bond-breaking, in a spin-adapted way with no active space selection. In this paper, we report a study of excited states using "tailored coupled cluster singles and doubles," to attempt to use pCCD as a kernel for more complete coupled-cluster singles and doubles (CCSD) results for excited states. Several excited states are explored from those primarily due to single excitations to those dominated by doubly excited states and from singlet-triplet splittings for some diradical states. For the first two situations, tailored pCCD-TCCSD offers no improvement over equation of motion-CCSD. However, when we explore the singlet-triplet gap of diradical molecules that are manifestly multi-reference, a pCCD kernel provides improved results, particularly with generalized valence bond orbitals.

High-accuracy first-principles-based rate coefficients for the reaction of OH and CH3OOH.

The ˙OH-initiated oxidation of methyl hydroperoxide, which plays an important role in the atmospheric chemistry of methane, was theoretically characterized using high-accuracy composite amHEAT-345(Q) coupled-cluster calculations followed by a two-dimensional E,J resolved master equation analysis. The reaction is found to proceed through two distinct hydrogen-bonded pre-reactive complexes leading to two product channels, in accord with the experimental observations: (i) ˙OH + CH3OOH → CH3OO˙ + H2O with a yield of 0.8 ± 0.1, and (ii) ˙OH + CH3OOH → HCHO + ˙OH + H2O with a yield of 0.2 ± 0.1. The calculated reaction enthalpies are within 0.2 kcal mol-1 of the benchmark ATcT values. Overall thermal rate coefficients obtained from first principles are found to be in the low-pressure limit at atmospheric pressure; the total rate coefficient can be expressed over the T = 200-450 K range as k(T) = 5.0 × 10-12 × T-0.152 × exp(287/T) cm3 s-1, strongly supporting the experimental results of Vaghjiani and Ravishankara (J. Phys. Chem. 1989, 93, 1948), with which this expression agrees within ca. 15%. The current results show that (i) is the principal reaction channel and support the view that, due to its inherently fast transformations, CH3OOH is an important redistribution species for HOx˙ radicals in the Earth's atmosphere.

Reaction of Methylidyne with Ethane: The C-C Insertion Is Unimportant.

High-accuracy coupled-cluster calculations in combination with the E,J-resolved master-equation analysis are used to study the reaction mechanism and kinetics of methylidyne with ethane. This reaction plays an important role in the combustion of hydrocarbon fuels and in interstellar chemistry. Two distinct mechanisms, the C-C and the C-H insertions of CH in C2H6, are characterized. The C-C insertion pathway is identified to have a large barrier of 34.5 kcal mol-1 and hence plays no significant role in kinetics. The C-H insertion pathway is found to have no barrier, leading to a highly vibrationally excited n-C3H7 radical, which rapidly dissociates (within 50 ps) to yield CH3 + C2H4 and H + C3H6 in a roughly 7:3 ratio. These findings are in good agreement with an experimental result that indicates that about 20% of the reaction goes to H + C3H6. The reaction of the electronically excited quartet state of the CH radical with C2H6 is examined for the first time and found to proceed as a direct H-abstraction via a small barrier of 0.4 kcal mol-1 to yield triplet CH2 and C2H5. The reaction on the quartet state surface is negligibly slow at low temperatures characteristic of interstellar environments but becomes important at high combustion temperatures.

Density functionals for core excitations.

The core excitation energies and related principal ionization energies are obtained for selected molecules using several density functionals and compared with benchmark equation-of-motion coupled cluster (EOM-CC) results. Both time-dependent and time-independent formulations of excitation spectra in the time-dependent density functional theory and the EOM-CC are employed to obtain excited states that are not always easily accessible with the time-independent method. Among those functionals, we find that the QTP(00) functional, which is only parameterized to reproduce the five IPs of water, provides excellent core IPs and core excitation energies, consistently yielding better excitation and ionization energies. We show that orbital eigenvalues of KS density functional theory play an important role in determining the accuracy of the excitation and photoelectron spectra.

Examining fundamental and excitation gaps at the thermodynamic limit: A combined (QTP) DFT and coupled cluster study on trans-polyacetylene and polyacene.

Interest in ab initio property prediction of π-conjugated polymers for technological applications places significant demand on "cost-effective" and conceptual computational methods, particularly effective, one-particle theories. This is particularly relevant in the case of Kohn-Sham Density Functional Theory (KS-DFT) and its new competitors that arise from correlated orbital theory, the latter defining the QTP family of DFT functionals. This study presents large, ab initio equation of motion-coupled cluster calculations using the massively parallel ACESIII to target the fundamental bandgap of two prototypical organic polymers, trans-polyacetylene (tPA) and polyacene (Ac), and provides an assessment of the new quantum theory project (QTP) functionals for this problem. Further results focusing on the 1Ag (1Ag), 1Bu (1B2u), and 3Bu (3B2u) excited states of tPA (Ac) are also presented. By performing calculations on oligomers of increasing size, extrapolations to the thermodynamic limit for the fundamental and all excitation gaps, as well as estimations of the exciton binding energy, are made. Thermodynamic-limit results for a combination of "optimal" and model geometries are presented. Calculated results for excitations that are adequately described using a single-particle model illustrate the benefits of requiring a KS-DFT functional to satisfy the Bartlett ionization potential theorem.

Benchmarking isotropic hyperfine coupling constants using (QTP) DFT functionals and coupled cluster theory.

Significant effort has been devoted to benchmarking isotropic hyperfine coupling constants for both wavefunction and density-based approaches in recent years, as accurate theoretical predictions aid the fitting of experimental model Hamiltonians. However, literature examining the predictive quality of a Density Functional Theory (DFT) functional abiding by the Bartlett IP condition is absent. In an attempt to rectify this, we report isotropic hyperfine coupling constant predictions of 24 commonly used DFT functionals on a total of 56 radicals, with the intent of exploring the successes and failures of the Quantum Theory Project (QTP) line of DFT functionals (i.e., CAM-QTP00, CAM-QTP01, CAM-QTP02, and QTP17) for this property. Included in this benchmark study are both small and large organic radicals as well as transition metal complexes, all of which have been studied to some extent in prior work. Subsequent coupled-cluster singles and doubles (CCSD) and CCSD withperturbative triples [CCSD(T)] calculations on small and large organic radicals show modest improvement as compared to prior work and offer an additional avenue for evaluation of DFT functional performance. We find that the QTP17 and CAM-QTP00 functionals consistently underperform, despite being parameterized to satisfy an IP eigenvalue condition primarily focused on inner shell electrons. On the other hand, the CAM-QTP01 functional is the most accurate functional in both organic radical datasets. Furthermore, both CAM-QTP01 and CAM-QTP02 are the most accurate functionals tested on the transition metal dataset. A significant portion of functionals were found to have comparable errors (within 5-15 MHz), but the hybrid class of DFT functionals maintains a consistently optimal balance between accuracy and precision across all datasets.

The intermediate state approach for doubly excited dark states in EOM-coupled-cluster theory.

Solution of dark, doubly excited states using equation-of-motion coupled-cluster (EOM-CC) usually equires at least triple excitations or even quadruples beyond the standard singles and doubles (EOM-CCSD) for an appropriate treatment. A new route to obtain these doubly excited states using EOM-CCSD is demonstrated. Traditionally, EOM-CC is performed on a closed shell reference state that has a well-described single reference CC wavefunction. In this Communication, we attempt to use low spin open-shell states such as the MS = 0 triplet and open-shell singlet as a reference state. Using this intermediate excited state as a reference state provides us with the benefit of obtaining a doubly excited state, as a single excitation at the cost of EOM-CCSD.

Equation of motion coupled-cluster study of core excitation spectra II: Beyond the dipole approximation.

We present the time-independent (TI) and time-dependent (TD) equation of motion coupled-cluster (EOM-CC) oscillator strengths not limited to those obtained by the dipole approximation. For the conventional TI-EOM-CC, we implement all the terms in the multipole expansion through second order that contributes to the oscillator strength. These include contributions such as magnetic dipole, electric quadrupole, electric octupole, and magnetic quadrupole. In TD-EOM-CC, we only include the quadrupole moment contributions. This augments our previous work [Y. C. Park, A. Perera, and R. J. Bartlett, J. Chem. Phys. 151, 164117 (2019)]. The inclusion of the quadrupole contributions (and all the other contributions through second order in the case of TI-EOM-CCSD) enables us to obtain the intensities for the pre-edge transitions in the metal K-edge spectra, which are dipole inactive. The TI-EOM-CCSD and TD-EOM-CCSD spectra of Ti4+ atoms are used to showcase the implementation of the second-order oscillator strengths. The origin of 1s → e and 1s → t2 in core spectra from iron tetrachloride and titanium tetrachloride is discussed and compared with the experiment.

Explicitly correlated Fock-space coupled-cluster singles and doubles method for (1,1), (0,2), and (2,0) sectors.

A linearly approximated explicitly correlated coupled-cluster singles and doubles model for the Fock-space coupled-cluster method has been formulated and implemented. An extension of the Fock-space wave operators is introduced in order to treat the short-range correlation effects for excited and doubly electron-attached states. We show that an effective reduction in the number of active virtuals can also be obtained by improving how the short-range correlation is treated. Numerical results to gauge the performance for valence and Rydberg excitation energies, double ionization potentials, and double electron attachment energies of several molecules are obtained. Statistical measures of the errors in excitation energies show that the explicitly correlated results are within 0.1 eV from the complete basis set limit already at the double-ζ level unless the excitation energies are too close to the ionization thresholds. Similar accuracy is seen for the double ionization potentials and double electron attachment energies.

A route to improving RPA excitation energies through its connection to equation-of-motion coupled cluster theory.

We revisit the connection between equation-of-motion coupled cluster (EOM-CC) and random phase approximation (RPA) explored recently by Berkelbach [J. Chem. Phys. 149, 041103 (2018)] and unify various methodological aspects of these diverse treatments of ground and excited states. The identity of RPA and EOM-CC based on the ring coupled cluster doubles is established with numerical results, which was proved previously on theoretical grounds. We then introduce new approximations in EOM-CC and RPA family of methods, assess their numerical performance, and explore a way to reap the benefits of such a connection to improve on excitation energies. Our results suggest that addition of perturbative corrections to account for double excitations and missing exchange effects could result in significantly improved estimates.

Advanced concepts in electronic structure (ACES) software programs.

The advanced concepts in electronic structure (ACES) programs are products of the Bartlett research group at the University of Florida. They consist of ACES II, which is serial, and ACES III and Aces4, which are massively parallel. All three programs are publically available free of charge. The focus of the ACES implementations is coupled cluster theory and many-body-perturbation theory. We give an overview of the ACES programs, discuss the many features of the program systems, and document the number of benchmarks.

Index of multi-determinantal and multi-reference character in coupled-cluster theory.

A full configuration interaction calculation (FCI) ultimately defines the innate molecular orbital description of a molecule. Its density matrix and the natural orbitals obtained from it quantify the difference between having N-dominantly occupied orbitals in a reference determinant for a wavefunction to describe N-correlated electrons and how many of those N-electrons are left to the remaining virtual orbitals. The latter provides a measure of the multi-determinantal character (MDC) required to be in a wavefunction. MDC is further split into a weak correlation part and a part that indicates stronger correlation often called multi-reference character (MRC). If several virtual orbitals have high occupation numbers, then one might argue that these additional orbitals should be allowed to have a larger role in the calculation, as in MR methods, such as MCSCF, MR-CI, or MR-coupled-cluster (MR-CC), to provide adequate approximations toward the FCI. However, there are problems with any of these MR methods that complicate the calculations compared to the uniformity and ease of application of single-reference CC calculations (SR-CC) and their operationally single-reference equation-of-motion (EOM-CC) extensions. As SR-CC theory is used in most of today's "predictive" calculations, an assessment of the accuracy of SR-CC at some truncation of the cluster operator would help to quantify how large an issue MRC actually is in a calculation, and how it might be alleviated while retaining the convenient SR computational character of CC/EOM-CC. This paper defines indices that identify MRC situations and help assess how reliable a given calculation is.

Vertical valence ionization potential benchmarks from equation-of-motion coupled cluster theory and QTP functionals.

The ionization potential (IP) of a molecule quantifies the energy required to remove an electron from the system. As such, it is a fundamental quantity in the context of redox chemistry, charge transfer, and molecular electronics. The accurate theoretical prediction of this property is therefore highly desirable for virtual materials design. Furthermore, vertical IPs are of interest in the development of many-body Green's function methods like the GW formalism, as well as density functionals and semiempirical methods. In this contribution, we report over 1468 vertical valence IPs calculated with the IP variant of equation-of-motion coupled cluster theory with singles and doubles (IP-EOM-CCSD) covering 155 molecules. The purpose of this is two-fold: First, the quality of the predicted IPs is compared with respect to experiments and higher-order coupled cluster theory. This confirms the overall high accuracy and robustness of this method, with some outliers which are discussed in detail. Second, a large set of consistent theoretical reference values for vertical valence IPs are generated. This addresses a lack of reliable reference data for lower-lying valence IPs, where experimental data are often unavailable or of dubious quality. The benchmark set is then used to assess the quality of the eigenvalues predicted by different density functional approximations (via Bartlett's IP-eigenvalue theorem) and the extended Koopmans' theorem approach. The QTP family of functionals are found to be remarkably accurate, low-cost alternatives to IP-EOM-CCSD.

Similarity-transformed equation-of-motion coupled-cluster singles and doubles method with spin-orbit effects for excited states.

The similarity transformed equation-of-motion coupled-cluster method (STEOM-CCSD) for excited states is extended to treat spin-orbit coupling interactions (SOIs) using the spin-orbit mean field approximation of the Breit-Pauli Hamiltonian. Two possible schemes to include the spin-orbit splittings of excited states within the STEOM-CCSD model are formulated. They are identified as "diagonalize-then-perturb" and "perturb-then-diagonalize" approaches. The second approach is more suited for cases where SOI is larger, and the first approach breaks down. With the aid of the standard many-body diagrammatic techniques, expressions for all the necessary matrix elements can be derived. These new formulations are implemented in the ACES III suite of parallel coupled cluster programs, and benchmark studies are performed. Numerical tests for several atoms and molecules show a good agreement of calculated spin-orbit splittings to experiment, while also documenting the numerical differences between the two approaches.

Equation of motion coupled-cluster for core excitation spectra: Two complementary approaches.

This paper presents core excitation spectra from coupled-cluster (CC) theory obtained from both a time-independent and a new time-dependent formalism. The conventional time-independent CC formulation for excited states is the equation-of-motion (EOM-CC) method whose eigenvalues and eigenvectors describe the core excited states. An alternative computational procedure is offered by a time-dependent CC description. In that case, the dipole transition operator is expressed in the CC effective Hamiltonian form and propagated with respect to time. The absorption spectrum is obtained from the CC dipole autocorrelation function via a Fourier transformation. Comparisons are made among the time-dependent results obtained from second-order perturbation theory, to coupled cluster doubles and their linearized forms (CCD and LCCD), to CC singles and doubles (CCSD) and the linearized form (LCCSD). In the time-independent case, considerations of triples (EOM-CCSDT) and quadruples (EOM-CCSDTQ) are used to approach sub-electron volt accuracy. A particular target is the allyl radical, as an example of an open-shell molecule. As the results have to ultimately be the same, the two procedures offer a complementary approach toward analyzing experimental results.

Vibrational Characterization of Radical Ion Adducts between Imidazole and CO2.

We address the molecular level origins of the dramatic difference in the catalytic mechanisms of CO2 activation by the seemingly similar molecules pyridine (Py) and imidazole (Im). This is accomplished by comparing the fundamental interactions of CO2 radical anions with Py and Im in the isolated, gas phase PyCO2- and ImCO2- complexes. These species are prepared by condensation of the neutral compounds onto a (CO2) n- cluster ion beam by entrainment in a supersonic jet ion source. The structures of the anionic complexes are determined by theoretical analysis of their vibrational spectra, obtained by IR photodissociation of weakly bound CO2 molecules in a photofragmentation mass spectrometer. Although the radical PyCO2- system adopts a carbamate-like configuration corresponding to formation of an N-C covalent bond, the ImCO2- species is revealed to be best described as an ion-molecule complex in which an oxygen atom in the CO2- radical anion is H-bonded to the NH group. Species that feature a covalent N-C interaction in ImCO2- are calculated to be locally stable structures, but are much higher in energy than the largely electrostatically bound ion-molecule complex. These results support the suggestion from solution phase electrochemical studies (Bocarsly et al. ACS Catal. 2012, 2, 1684-1692) that the N atoms are not directly involved in the catalytic activation of CO2 by Im.

Low scaling EOM-CCSD and EOM-MBPT(2) method with natural transition orbitals.

A low-scaling method is presented for the equation-of-motion coupled-cluster theory with single and double (EOM-CCSD) excitations and its second-order many-body perturbation theory [EOM-MBPT(2)] approximations. For a simple description of an excited state, the particular orbitals, ϕ I and ϕ à , are selected from the natural transition orbitals (NTOs, ϕ ), where I and à refer to NTO occupied and virtual orbital indices. They are chosen based on the largest eigenvalues of the transition density matrix. We expect the ϕ I and ϕ à pair to be dominant in representing excited states in EOM calculations. Therefore, the double excitation vector, R 2 which scale as ∼O 2 V 2, can be modified to keep only a few dominant excitations. Our work indicates that the most important contributions of the R 2 vector define smaller subspaces that scale as ∼OV, ∼O 2 V, and ∼OV 2, where O and V refer to the occupied and virtual orbitals in the NTO basis. Thus, the scaling for the EOM part becomes ∼M 5. The energy changes due to R 2 truncation are small (the mean average deviation from untruncated EOM-CCSD is ∼0.03 eV). We show that this approach works relatively well with various types of NTOs, ranging from configuration singles to time-dependent density functional theory making ∼M 5 scaling calculations possible with the use of MBPT(2) as the reference state.